


Appropriate

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Drifting with a Kaiju Brain, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Inline with canon, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Panic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23185678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "There is only Newton, sprawling on the floor trembling with helpless electrical impulses as Hermann forces his recalcitrant body into motion via sheer desperation." Hermann finds Newt after the fallout of his first experiment.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 6
Kudos: 74





	Appropriate

It’s quiet as Hermann comes in the door to the lab.

It’s never quiet in the lab. Hermann has some vague recollection of peace, of blissful silence upon which his thoughts can blossom wide and sprawling without consideration for the white canvas over which they paint themselves, but it has been long years since he had any such personal experience of such. Newton is a constant presence, the raindrop patter of his voice and the bone-deep thud of his preferred music as much a part of daily life as the dull, endless ache from Hermann’s knee, and Hermann has scoffed and protested and snapped even as he adjusted himself around it, manipulating his expectations until he was as deft with his coping mechanisms as his grip is upon the cane that has become an extension of his broken body. Hermann  _ expects _ the sound, the same way he waits as if holding his breath for the gasps of horror that come with Newton inevitably spilling over the demarcation that Hermann always respects and Newton never does, and in its absence something strange and hollow in him echoes back the sound of his own heartbeat like a foretelling of doom. Hermann goes still in the doorway, forehead creasing and lips frowning as he stares at the casual destruction that Newton always wrecks upon the space they are meant to share; and then there is a rattling inhale, and a clatter of metal, and Hermann’s gaze tracks it to its source before the premonition in his head can scream him into the bliss of deliberate ignorance. Hermann blinks, and looks, and sees: and the world stutters to a halt around him.

For a moment he cannot move. There is Newton, loose-limbed and trembling with the broken, helpless motion of electrocution, of spastic neurons flashing into strobing incoherence: and Hermann’s knee locks, his head jerks back, his whole body goes rigid with the first horrifying recognition of what he’s seeing. His breath is trapped in his throat, knotted around a scream too violent to carry itself to voice; his fingers have spasmed to cramp around the handle of the cane bracing him upright as his vision sways and his balance quakes. Hermann is trapped, locked immobile by his own shock as surely as Newton is—as Newton—

“Newton,” Hermann chokes out, and he flings himself forward, casting the weight of his body off-center as a means of demanding action from his horror-locked limbs. “ _Newton!” _ His hand jerks to fling his cane forward to catch himself, his feet topple him onward, and he’s skidding across the metal of the lab floor, careless of where he steps or what biological unpleasantness his cane swings through as he goes. The mess is forgotten, the line down the center is ignored: there is only Newton, sprawling on the floor trembling with helpless electrical impulses as Hermann forces his recalcitrant body into motion via sheer desperation. His cane is swinging forward, his hands are coming out, and Hermann doesn’t even look as his grip falters and his knees buckle to drop him to the ground at Newton’s feet. “What have you  _ done!_”

His hands are moving of their own accord, reaching and clasping and clutching to steady that horrible motion of Newton’s head, to ease the spastic jerking of agony in the other’s body. There is a tangle of metal wrapping around Newton’s neck and reaching out to clutch a three-leaved hold around his head: Hermann stares at it in horrified confusion for a moment before his brain seizes logic enough to bring a hand up and crush down the button at the top. The thing springs open, releasing its grasp on Newton’s temples, and Newton gasps an inhale as of relief and reaches up to seize at Hermann’s sleeve as his body loosens its feverish hold on tension.

“Hhh,” he chokes out. His fingers jerk against Hermann’s sleeve, compressing to a too-tight band before pulling away and almost falling before he manages to regain his hold. “H-hermann.”

“Shut  _ up_,” Hermann gasps. His hand is shoving under the metal of the thing Newton strapped onto his skull, offering the barrier of his own body to stand as a wall between Newton’s creation and the man himself. Newton is still shaking, shivering with a violence that speaks to his absolute lack of control over his body. Hermann is clutching Newton against him, one hand clasping around the side of the other’s neck and the other cradling Newton’s head to his chest as if to still the tremor in the other’s body and mind with the rhythm of his own racing heartbeat. Hermann can’t find his breath. His eyes are burning and blurred and he can’t seem to clear them no matter how hard he blinks. “Newton, you absolute  _ imbecile_, what on  _ earth _ did you do?”

“I,” Newton pants. His hand is still shaking against Hermann’s sleeve; he’s reaching up higher, fumbling along Hermann’s arm as his twitching fingers seize and release against the other’s sleeve by inches. “I, I, I Drifted, I—with the Kaiju, Hermann, to show—and I was  _ right_, I saw—it’s a hive mind, I was right Hermann, I—”

“You  _ Drifted_?” Hermann’s voice breaks free from his grasp, shattering upwards into the shrill resonance of panic as his hold tightens against Newton’s face, hair, neck, clutching as if to shove away the danger of the recent past. “With a—a  _ Kaiju_, Newton, what were you  _ thinking_?”

“Had to,” Newton chokes out. He’s got a grip on Hermann’s shoulder, now; he’s still shaking, his shoulders and his breath and his legs, his knee is jumping as if to find a drumbeat for his heel against the floor, but his fingers are fisted into the back of Hermann’s coat and he’s breathing, his hair is soft under Hermann’s palm and his breath is hot at Hermann’s neck and he’s shaking and shattered and alive and Hermann doesn’t know how he’s ever going to persuade his hands to loosen. “It’s the apocalypse, Hermann, I—I had to.”

“You most certainly did  _ not_,” Hermann says against the side of his head, into the soft of his tousled hair. His heart is racing, speeding into useless panic that is trembling through his shoulders and threatening the helpless strength of the hold he has bracing Newton against him. “You didn’t  _ have _ to, you  _ idiot_, you could have  _ died_, you might have killed yourself and—”

Hermann can’t go on. His throat is closed up again, flexed tight as if an invisible hand has seized around his neck to stifle his voice. Newton’s hand is at his shoulder and Hermann’s fingers are fisted into Newton’s hair but his eyes are wide and staring at the familiar space of their lab, at the yellow line marking out a distinction that has never really existed, and Hermann’s breath is caught by the incandescent, gravity-defying horror of the possibility of a world without Newton in it next to him.

Newton’s fingers quiver against his sleeve before his thumb slides out to brace into a better hold against Hermann’s arm. He gusts a breath into Hermann’s coatfront. “Jeez, Hermann,” he says, and his voice is cracked and broken and even his laughter sounds weak as a sob. “I didn’t know you cared.”

Hermann’s chest compresses as he blows all the air in him out of his lungs. “Newton, you complete  _ fool_,” he grates out, and his hands have found their way to Newton’s face and his wrists are flexing to tip the other’s head up, and Hermann is pulling back and ducking his head as Newton’s chin lifts in surrender to the urging of his hands. Newton’s eyes are unfocused, his glasses smudged and his face grimy with grease and oil and Heaven knows what else and his nose is tickling blood down over his upper lip, and Hermann doesn’t even hesitate before bringing his head down to press his mouth firmly to Newton’s.

Newton’s fingers jerk at Hermann’s shoulder, his hold flexing for a moment of shock that is echoed by a stifled note of surprise that breaks from the back of his throat, but Hermann’s mouth is too close to his for it to be heard as more than a muffled whine. Hermann’s hands are framing Newton’s face, his fingers tangled in Newton’s hair and his other hand shoving the whole awful contraption sideways off the other’s head; he can taste blood at his mouth, and grease, and something sharp and brittle like copper that he really doesn’t want to think too much about. But Newton’s mouth is against his, his lips soft and parted on shocked surrender, and for a dizzy moment Hermann stays right where he is as his heart races with a relief so frantic it leaves him trembling nearly as badly as Newton.

They stay there for a breath, Newton clutching at Hermann’s sleeve as Hermann crushes a kiss to Newton’s mouth; and then Hermann pulls back, and gasps for a breath as Newton stares up at him.

“I’m going to get Pentecost,” he says, and braces his fingers tight at the back of Newton’s neck. “Stay  _ right _ here and do  _ not _ do  _ anything _ else until I return.” Newton blinks, looking lost and dizzy and startled out of himself, and Hermann cannot do anything but duck in to force another kiss against Newton’s lips. Newton rocks back at the impact, tilting into the support of Hermann’s hold as his lashes flutter shut, and Hermann pulls back in a rush before he can lose himself to further insanity. He forces his hands to loosen from Newton’s hair, and rocks himself away from the soft of Newton’s shock-parted lips, and turns away to fumble for his dropped cane. Newton lets his hold on Hermann’s sleeve go as Hermann plants a hand at the sticky floor to push himself up, and as Hermann struggles to his feet Newton drops back against the support behind him with a sigh. Hermann looks sharply at him, his adrenaline spiking to brittle heights again; but Newton is slouched into stillness, his eyes shut and breathing clear, if still ragged with effort. Hermann stares at him for a moment, his heart aching and eyes burning and mouth trembling; and then he forces himself away, and he turns to be the bearer of the news Newton nearly gave his life for.


End file.
